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Herb Geisler: Going Out On A High Note

November 01, 2017 - 5 minute read


Herb Geisler before a performance

Herb Geisler, who spent 29 years at Concordia and built the best university handbell program in the country, retired on an outstanding note. His Concert Handbells group was selected to perform a one-hour evening concert at the National Seminar of the Handbell Musicians of America in July. CUI was the only school or university ensemble to be chosen.

“It was a high point in CUI’s handbell experience,” says Geisler.

The National Seminar draws handbell educators and ringers from as far away as Australia, Hong Kong and Europe. Adding another feather to CUI’s cap, an ensemble led by alum Alex Guebert ’10 was featured the first night, and CUI adjunct professor Nancy Jessup taught several classes there.

“It was such a climax to the years that I’ve been doing this,” say Geisler, who was professor of music and director of music education and handbells. “In recent years, Nancy and I have auditioned students every year, challenged our ringers, and new ringers came in who were talented and looking for a place to play bells in college. This Seminar was the culmination of all of that.”

Handbells became part of CUI’s music program in the early 1980s under B. Wayne Bisbee, the choir director at the time. Geisler was teaching in Michigan with no thought of the West Coast.

“I had started the handbell program at Concordia Ann Arbor and built it to three ensembles,” he says. “I’d never spent any time in California. I applied to Irvine not having any reason except I was curious.”

A call came from then-President Ray Halm offering him a job as a music professor

“In my mind I said, ‘You’re kidding,’” Geisler remembers. “I didn’t accept it for a couple of months because I did not expect to be chosen. My parents and grandfather were in Michigan, and had moved there because I was there.”

Still, Geisler felt called by the invitation and found himself driving a U-Haul to southern California. Christ College (now CUI) wanted him to help build a Music Education program.

“I’m naturally inclined to get programs going, to build things,” Geisler says.

Soon, he grew the chapel choir from 10 to 45 people, and taught music theory, music history, instrumental techniques, and philosophy of humanities while developing the Music Education program.

From the start, handbells were center stage.

People know about us all over the country. We’ve toured 37 states and are known for being a high quality university program.

“Bud Bisbee had built it up to a very high quality program and was composing difficult music for them,” Geisler says. “I really felt kind of stuck with it at times. Not that I didn’t like it, but even though I thought I’d like to focus on something else, I couldn’t let it go, partly because students kept soaking it up. I kept seeing the commitment and passion.”

By the time Nancy Jessup, Geisler’s longtime colleague, came to CUI from Prince of Peace Lutheran in Anaheim, the program had four handbell ensembles and would eventually grow to include 50 students. Geisler says students are drawn to the captivating sound of the bells and the social aspect of playing them.

“There’s something about the social fabric of a handbell ensemble, and of a program where the people who ring realize they’re important. They’re essential,” he says. “‘If I’m not there, nobody’s there to play my part.’ Therefore you build a bond and appreciate others very intensely. You realize, ‘I have to learn and hold onto my part so other people can function. And I have to count on them so I can function.’ You help each other out.”

Even singers or musicians with years of experience find they improve their sight reading, sense of rhythm and general musicianship with handbells.

“Each musician has a very independent, even soloistic part that has to lock in very tightly with everybody else’s,” Geisler says. “People extend their musicianship in handbells in a way they would miss being singers and instrumentalists.”

One hallmark of CUI’s handbell program has been the original music its students produce. Alex ’10 and brother Christian Guebert ’10, who served as student directors and led the alumni handbell ensemble, both composed music while touring with CUI’s groups.

“These guys would sit on the bus, feet up on the seat in front of them, with a laptop or clipboard just dashing away music like little Mozarts,” Geisler says. “It’s good stuff consistently.”

Alex has become prominent in the handbell world as a director, composer, and teacher, also directing several high-level ensembles, including St. John’s Cathedral Bells, and L.A. Bronze. Christian is a PhD student in composition at UCLA, where he serves as a teaching assistant for musicianship and theory at the Herb Alpert School of Music. He also serves as music director at Immanuel Lutheran Church in Orange and adjunct professor at CUI.

Nick Hanson ’03, an Iowa native, came to CUI largely because of handbells. Today he runs a full-time handbells program at a school in suburban Washington, D.C., and publishes handbell music.

Hanson was at the National Seminar, where many strands of CUI’s handbell history came together.

“Concordia Irvine was truly pinned to the map at this Seminar,” says Geisler. “People know about us all over the country. We’ve toured 37 states and are known for being a high quality university program. But this is the first time we have been seen as an ensemble at a national event like this.”

The group debuted Alex’s new piece called “Drive,” which he dedicated to Concordia because he felt it captured the personality of Concordia concert handbells.

“Our ensemble took to it very quickly and performed it like it was theirs,” Geisler says. The event was a fitting capstone to Geisler’s legacy at CUI.

“Herb has put something significant in place,” says Jeff Held, CUI’s performing and visual arts division chair, and director of instrumental music. “It’s a nationally known program and draws students from around the nation. That’s really exemplary.”

In Geisler’s last two years at CUI, the number of music education students doubled.

“Herb has set an example of mentoring at a very individual level,” Held says. “He spends a lot of time with music education students, helping them to identify their strengths and weaknesses, and how to develop the skill sets they need when they get in the classroom. In the history of any institution, it’s pretty easy to look back and see the fingerprints of a music director or two in the first, say, thirty to fifty years that truly establishes the mission of the program. Herb is the first name on that list. He’s helped to shepherd this department to what it is today.”

Looking back, Geisler says the student connections override any academic or musical achievements.

“That’s at the foundation of it,” Geisler says. “To see them go through the ups and downs of their own education and how they impact each other. And to see how I and my colleagues become part of their lives.”

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